P.M. Barrow Comments on the Ashcroft Group and Pending Legal Matters

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Barrow earlier today also dealt with other significant issues in respect of companies relating to the Ashcroft Group. These include the international arbitral awards; the local enforcement on UHS being heard in September in Belize and then the second nationalization of B.T.L. which will be heard before the CCJ in December. First, PM speaks of UHS.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“I am hopeful that we will win that case and I will tell you why I am hopeful. I don’t see how there can be enforcement in the particular circumstances. What am I talking about? Clearly forty million dollars was paid to the Belize Bank and that cleared off the UHS indebtedness; the indebtedness of government as guarantor for the UHS loan. A problem arose later on when twenty million of the forty was clawed back. But before that took place, there was the sale of the hospital.”

Reporter

“The bank sold it…”

Dean Barrow

“After the indebtedness was cleared off, why on earth did not the asset which was collateral for the indebtedness revert to government? And when it was sold how come government received not a penny? Is there some sort of double-dipping, double collection on the part of the bank? If you look at the first partial award made by the tribunal, you will see that they found as a fact that the Belize Bank collected thirty-nine million dollars by way of that sale of the asset. If that is a fact, and we know that they had earlier collected forty million dollars, how come you on the face of it end up with seventy nine million dollars for a forty million dollar debt? All sorts of things are inexplicable to me and the labyrinthine way in which this whole transaction develop convinces me that a court getting to the bottom of it will find that there is not any proper basis for the enforcement of that second partial award that the Belize Bank is trying to get paid.”

We tried to get a comment from the Belize Bank. A spokesman for the Bank said that they did not hear the Prime Minister’s comments, but from what we told him, he said that there was no double-dipping by the Bank. The Belize Bank spokesman said, “That the directive from the Central Bank for the return to the Government of ten million U.S. dollars, which is Belize twenty million dollars in 2008, meant that a debt was still owed by the Government to the Bank. It is this debt plus accrued interest and legal fees which were the basis for the arbitration award. And it is this award that the bank is trying to seek payment for, since the Government has, to date, failed to pay.”